The Breakup

In past posts, I have alluded to the story behind my breakup, but I have never told it here. I’m thinking now’s a good time to tell it.

Sam was nine years old when I got married. I had not intended to marry while Sam was young, but he kept begging for a daddy. Scott is a nice person, and he seemed like a good choice. I thought he would be able to relate to Sam since he had grown up without his dad and with step-dads who were abusive. I really thought he would try to make life better for Sam than it was for him.

It didn’t turn out that way at all. Despite his fine talk and promises before we got married, he had no desire to be a dad at all. Sam was so excited to finally have a dad but soon found out he just had a man living in the same house who would rather not have Sam there at all. Sam used his own money to buy stuff for them to do together (ie: a football to throw around, a model rocket to build, etc), but Scott took no interest in him. I thought it was wonderful our first Christmas when Scott wanted to get Sam a tv for his room, but I was hurt when he admitted some time later that it was to keep Sam in his room and away from us. When Scott was home, he didn’t want Sam around at all. Luckily for me and Sam, Scott is a workaholic and was gone working much of the time for the first three years.

That leads us to a turning point. Scott got laid off, and I started working two jobs to help ends meet. As a result, Scott and Sam were home alone together a lot more than in the past. I thought that would be a good thing, that it would foster a better relationship between them. I was wrong. Scott resented Sam more and more, and Sam was hurt by the constant rebuff from Scott. I didn’t know until later that Scott was deliberately trying to put a wedge between me and Sam by telling him lies. He also purposely provoked him to try to get him to act out to prove to me that Sam was a bad kid and needed to be sent away to a boys’ home.

One evening (thankfully, I was home then), it all came to a climax. Scott yelled at Sam about something trivial and walked away without giving Sam a chance to reply. Sam followed after him demanding a chance to explain. As they walked through the kitchen, Sam grabbed a knife out of the knife block to get Scott’s attention. Scott ran and bolted himself in the bedroom and called 911. They came and took Sam to juvie. Sam was only thirteen years old.

The police officers told me that at the court hearing the next day, the judge would allow Sam to come back home, but Scott adamantly refused. He said that Sam could NEVER live in his house again. He also refused to go to court the next day, so I had to sit there and tell the judge that my husband wouldn’t let Sam come home and that I was afraid of what would happen to Sam while I was at work and he was left home alone with Scott. I’ll never forget the look of betrayal in Sam’s eyes as they led him back to the police car to take him back to juvie. He had to stay there another whole week. The judge told me that when he came back to court the next week, I better have a home for Sam to go to because he didn’t belong in juvie.

I was told that I would be allowed to call Sam once a day, but then the director of the facility said because of Sam’s young age and the circumstances of his being there, that he would make an exception and let me call him twice a day. Every time I talked to him, Sam cried and begged me to get him out of there. It broke my heart!

I found a tiny, one-bedroom apartment that I could barely afford, and a friend and her sons helped me move mine and Sam’s things on a cold, rainy day. I didn’t have the money to pay all the deposits and to buy the things I needed to set up a new home, so I had to get a title loan on my car. Do you know how much interest they charge on those??? It’s like legalized robbery! But, I had to do what I had to do for my son.

The day he got to come home was wonderful. We were both so happy, and his disposition soon went back to being the happy-go-lucky boy he always was before I got married. Sometime after we got settled into our new place, he started telling me all the things Scott had done and said to make his life miserable. He hadn’t told me before because he didn’t want to make me sad and make things worse between me and Scott.

One thing I must say, Scott never hit Sam, as far as I know. A couple weeks before the horrible incident, when they were into it about something, he swung out to slug him, but I got in the way. I had a huge bruise on my arm for weeks, but that sobered him up, and as far as I know, he never even tried to hit Sam again.

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